Further explanation from edsbs.com's Spencer Hall

Any self-respecting college football fan should be at least vaguely familiar with the best college football blog in the universe, everydayshouldbesaturday.com. The primary publisher of edsbs.com is Orson Swindle, which is an alias for the Georgia-based lawyer, and University of Florida alum, Spencer Hall (pictured).

Recently Mr. Hall has joined the college football crew at The Sporting News website. Whether or not his contributions are appearing in the actual magazine I don't know. While I like The Sporting News magazine quite a bit, I have stopped receiving it in the mail. Print media unfortunately is dying a slow and painful death.

Anyway, one of Spencer Hall's latest projects was to go to one of these "speed camps" that preps guys making the leap from college to the pro's. The writer/blogger/lawyer was taken to task and was beaten down considerably. The next time you tell yourself, "I could do that" while watching an NFL game, think again. That's Spencer Hall in the picture losing his lunch after the drills.

Unfortunately the first piece in the series is eluding me at the moment. It was hilarious. I'll try and track it down.

Scratch that, I found it.

Regardless, the more relevant second piece in the series offers up some theories on the mythical "SEC speed" vs. the slow and plodding Big Ten. I won't recap the whole deal but basically the trainers who run the facility Hall was training at told him the SEC athletes come in most prepared, followed closely by the Big XII and PAC-10 and that the Big Ten guys are a distant...last.

If I have that order incorrect all you need to know is that these guys think the SEC athletes are tops while the Big Ten guys are well off the pace. Got it?

The interesting thing here is you're not getting the typical BS about how the SEC guys from the south are "just faster". To the contrary, the trainers interviewed in the piece feel that all of these schools across the country (at least the elite programs), are basically starting from the same place as far as athletic ability is concerned. It's what the programs focus on that determines where the players end up when they're ready to enter the pro ranks.

Stop right there and think about that for a second. You mean chasing rabbits in south Florida (according to ESPN) isn't why the SEC schools and Miami and Florida State are "better" then the Big Ten schools? Boy, that's shocking that such a ludicrous theory would be refuted.

I'll cut to the chase here. I'm the loser that sends these guys questions so that the rest of you don't have to. Here's the email that I sent to Spencer Hall in response to his article:

Mr. Hall - Enjoyed your exploits at the training facility.

As far as your comments on the Big Ten vs. the SEC training regimen and subsequent results, I have a few questions. First off, the training facility that you chose is clearly within the SEC geographic footprint. Do they get more SEC athletes then Big Ten? Are they more likely to get higher quality SEC athletes that want to stay "close to home", so to speak? What athletes has this facility put in the professional ranks? I would have liked you to provide some of this detail to support your argument. Although I realize this is a sportingnews.com column, not a discertation.

If I'm not mistaken the disparity between the number of football players drafted into the NFL out of these two conferences on a percentage basis over the last five years is in the single digits. I could be wrong but I don't think it's all that significant on a relative scale.

I will not debate that over the last few years the SEC has proven themselves the best conference. I think that in general the degree to which the SEC is better then other conferences, particularly the Big Ten, is grossly overestimated. I believe the two conferences are nearly .500 head-to-head over the last few years.

Of course, none of this matters because Ohio State lost to Florida and then LSU. Ignore 1,400 games, we only need two to tell us everything we need to know about college football since 2005. Why does college football have to be all or nothing? The SEC is great. The Big Ten is terrible. There's no middle ground?


Much to my surprise, I received the following response literally within minutes...

The facility in question receives an even spread from all over the place, players-wise. (See clay's column for the list over at CBS sportsline.) Geography does not play a huge role in who they see.

The greater point here--and one that could have been more clearly stated-- is that when Big Ten teams have lost big games, they have been perceived as "slow," while when they win--as they do against SEC teams about half the time-- no one praises their "strength."

Training, like anything else, is subject to fashion. I closed with Michigan because that is the future: a blend of speed and strength with an emphasis on explosiveness.

I'm as homerish as they come, but I'm an empiricist first.
Thanks,
--S.

Interesting eh? Most importantly it should be considered that Spencer Hall, a registered proponent of the SEC and certified discreditor of Ohio State has given credence to some general bias as it relates to the Big Ten.